Talk:Turtledove's Tropes
While the French army in USA is trekking through the wilderness VR marvels at how efficient they are as foragers. In Worldwar I remember Daniels reflecting that in WWI he'd known great foragers, Americans and British and especially French. Those are the only two I can recall but it seems to me there are others. Should we throw that in? Turtle Fan 04:05, 9 December 2008 (UTC) :That's pretty minor. But then again, I dropped Butler sucks, so, who am I to claim something is minor. TR 05:48, 9 December 2008 (UTC) ::I like "Stan the Man" myself. Turtle Fan 05:55, 9 December 2008 (UTC) Sections As this list grows quite long, I was thinking: Could we make each point a seperate section so that we can navigate and especially edit the page more easily? Turtle Fan 23:49, 17 December 2008 (UTC) :I'd thought about that, too, but since we're comparing one or more story, no form of organization really jumped out at me. :Do you have any ideas? TR 00:05, 18 December 2008 (UTC) ::Well on other sites like this I've seen lists of minor one- or two-sentence jobs where every single entry is its own section. For instance, "Minor Characters from The Simpsons" works that way on Wikipedia. Turtle Fan 02:55, 18 December 2008 (UTC) ::What do you think? The huge-ass contents box is a pain if you want to scroll but you can always hide it easily enough. But if everyone hates it, we can roll it back. Turtle Fan 03:13, 18 December 2008 (UTC) :::So far it works. Give me a day or so to make sure. TR 03:28, 18 December 2008 (UTC) Los Angeles: Attacked by Asian Countries Heaven help me, but a good half-dozen possible "yellow peril" jokes popped into my head when I saw that. TR 21:38, 24 February 2009 (UTC) :Really? I did not have that reaction. Turtle Fan 21:58, 24 February 2009 (UTC) ::Haha, I'm reading about the Exclusion Act right now for a paper, so it crossed mine as well. :) Elefuntboy 22:18, 24 February 2009 (UTC) Washington Destroyed by an A-Bomb Section 8 is about Washington being nuked in multiple timelines. Subsection 8.1 is a list of other cities for which this is true. Isn't Washington just one among those many? Why not make the list the actual section and add Washington to it? Thoughts? Turtle Fan 03:15, 26 February 2009 (UTC) :I suspect someone added the nuked capitals at at latter date. :I actually think collapsing all the a-bomb related concepts into one big section is a good idea at this point. TR 16:23, 26 February 2009 (UTC) Conquering Canada Now it's been ages since I read GotS, and quite some time since I even had a copy handy; but I'm fairly sure I recall that by the end of the book, the US is doing well in its war against the British but the latter and their colonists are still in the fight and the Dominion of Canada remains viable. Turtle Fan 20:35, 17 March 2009 (UTC) :My memory is vague on the issue. TR 20:42, 17 March 2009 (UTC) ::As I recall, the US is doing well in the land war since they managed to reverse engineer AK-47s and have captured a number of Canadian cities including Ottawa and a prairie city (maybe Winnipeg but I may be mis-remembering TL-191). However, the Royal Navy rules the seas and has an effective naval blockade established and has shelled US coastal cities. I also recall a scene with Lee where he thinks Britain will loose the Canadas. I'll check when I have the chance. ML4E 20:47, 18 March 2009 (UTC) :::We can edit that to CS Victory in ACW leads to US invasion of Canada, rather than conquest. TR 21:09, 18 March 2009 (UTC) Suicide Is Painless I don't think I'd make this a section of this article, both because the parallels aren't that close and, more importantly, because this is a pretty irreverent article and what I'm going to mention is deadly serious. HT's terribly glib about suicide. When Hip realized his participation in genocide was evil, of course he killed himself! This was seen as the natural and appropriate course of action. Don't try to find some way to redeem yourself, just pull the trigger! And the hell of it was, what brought him to the decision was being told he was a good man! If he believes that, why is he self-slaughtering instead of looking for ways to make it up to his victims by sabotaging the population reduction from within, or protecting Bathsheba, or something like that? Similar to Dowling's reaction to hearing reports of the suicides of the prominent citizens of Whatchamacallit, Texas. What he was hearing should have been really horrifying stuff--But he reacted with satisfaction! That really pissed me off. Even among all my complaints against TG, that stood out. Now in The Golden Shrine he deals with suicide in what might be an even more inappropriate attitude: Hamnet had made a stray comment that he would kill himself before usurping the imperial crown. He repeated it to Marcovefa at a later date and she said "No you won't." He said "Try and stop me!" and went off an attempted it--twice!--''to prove he didn't have to do what she said!'' He failed both times, and Marcovefa hinted that God prevented it from happening because He needed Hamnet to play a vital role in His plan. Still--Can we please get a little acknowledgement of the gravity of the situation? The greatest and saddest failure of humanity? Christ! Turtle Fan 20:57, October 21, 2009 (UTC) Vichy France There were no references to Vichy France in ItPoME. The whole of the country is occupied. TR 19:24, March 1, 2010 (UTC) :It's got an ItPoME section as I've described it. ::Huh? No, it doesn't. "Vichy France ceased to exist after the Greater German Reich and its Axis allies emerged victorious from World War II, and occupied France in its entirety." TR 21:25, March 1, 2010 (UTC) :::Oh, it's the France article I was reading. Vichy France is mentioned there. :::If that's all the section says it could probably stand to be deleted. Turtle Fan 21:31, March 1, 2010 (UTC) ::::Since we have no idea if Vichy France existed in ItPoME, I went ahead and deleted all the references. It's reasonable to believe Vichy did exist for a time, but then again, we know so little about actual POD of ItPoME. TR 21:56, March 1, 2010 (UTC) :But if there's no Vichy then the Germans annexing all of France rather than dicking around with collaborators is in both Worldwar and ItPoME, and might be another section. Turtle Fan 21:18, March 1, 2010 (UTC) ::Yes, indeed. TR 21:25, March 1, 2010 (UTC) "France: Harry Turtledove's Bitch." I like it. Simple, forceful, direct. Turtle Fan 23:27, March 1, 2010 (UTC) Palestine While I appreciate your joke caption on the map of Palestine and have no objection to it, the Ottoman province was much larger and included modern Israel, Jordan, Lebanon and parts of Syria. ML4E 04:12, March 7, 2010 (UTC) :I know. I was debating which map to use, and ultimately chose the path of least resistance. TR 17:36, March 7, 2010 (UTC) ::The way which requires less up. That's my favorite as well. Turtle Fan 21:06, March 7, 2010 (UTC) FDR not a tyrant I was thinking about this one, but it may be a little broad/esoteric: we have two North American Presidents (Joe Steele and Jake Featherston) who come to the office in the early 1930s, effectively become president for life, and do quite a few thinks that FDR did on the domestic front. Arguably, HT was responding to those who argue that FDR was some sort of tyrant/dictator. HT seems to be saying that, yes, FDR enjoyed a great deal of unprecedented power during his 3+ terms, but if he were really a dictator, he'd have acted like Steele or Featherston. Opinions? TR 20:59, March 17, 2010 (UTC) :I think it relies too much on a subjective interpretation of story elements. If it were just Steele, I'd say that was valid (though it wouldn't be multiple timelines) since in that story the choice between Steele and Roosevelt was the critical decision. But in 191 he was just kind of there; in fact, Flora at one point wondered if he might not have become Featherston himself had he been able-bodied. So the latter can't fly without a reader making a certain interpretation, and this page is for saying things we can all respond to. Turtle Fan 22:38, March 17, 2010 (UTC) Stalingrad Maybe I miss read it, but I was under the impression that the battle of Chicago in World War, and Louisville in How Few Remain were also analogues of Stalingrad? Mr Nelg :Chicago probably was. I'd have to reread HFR for Louisville. TR 00:07, April 3, 2010 (UTC) ::The general idea behind the battle was big army buries it's self in city. Other army counter attacks on the flanks, circling and trapping the attacking army in city. That's was basiclly happened in both those battles. Mr Nelg :::That by itself is a fairly generic theme. It also has to be the climactic battle; neither of those were. Wilcox somehow hung on in Louisville till the war became politically untenable. The Lizards continued pressing on Chicago after receiving their first ass-kicking. And in neither case was the attacking army destroyed. In all the Stalingrad analogs we either know that it was or are at least free to assume. In your two nominees we know it was not. Turtle Fan 02:47, April 3, 2010 (UTC) Madame President Slim addition there. However, given HT's patterns, I expect it to grow a little bit. Supervolcano probably affords some possibilities. And in Gizzie world, Flora was elected president for life in the 1950s, and defeated the angry CS soldier in hand to hand comabt. TR 22:49, April 9, 2010 (UTC) :Darwin once predicted President Flora, back when he and I were exclusively Crappy Boarders. He said something about how dangerous she'd be because her maternal instinct for protecting her young would extend to the entire country. Mrs Thatcher didn't set up a mommy state, nor did she try to set one up, in his beloved UK. I wonder why I never thought to bring that up. Turtle Fan 23:13, April 9, 2010 (UTC) No Israel The R-Strain concerns a Rabbi deciding whether a cud chewing pig is kosher. Where are the never ending attacks on Israel? ML4E 22:08, April 12, 2010 (UTC) :As he's driving along the freeway (of course, it's another SoCal story) for some reason he thinks back through all the conflicts Jews have been drawn into over the millennia. He connects it to the present day by thinking of Israeli-Palestinian conflicts, which rage on "with no end in sight." Turtle Fan 23:44, April 12, 2010 (UTC) Lizards and Jews The Lizard embassy to Germany routinely protested the Holocaust, yes, and the Jews trusted them . . . about as well as they trusted anyone, after the war. It's been a long time since I read Colonization but I remember that Moishe Russie twice lobbied Atvar to do something to help Jews in Europe. One involved helping out Goldfarb. I don't remember what the other one was. Atvar agreed to do the lesser of the two but not the one which called for greater effort, though it was still extremely little effort for the most powerful being on the planet. Germany wanted its Jews gone: preferably dead, but it wouldn't have broken the peace with the Race to go after them. Probably not, anyway; and if it did it would have gotten its ass kicked. The other powers would have been less likely still to support them in that goal than they had the goal of taking Poland. The Race wanted humans to like it, and if it couldn't get all of them it wanted enough to shift around and balance out the ones who didn't. The best supply for ingratiated human subjects was people who'd been abused by human governments, and no one had been more abused than European Jews. And they wanted the Holocaust to end. If I were Atvar I would have just offered to take the Jews off the Germans' hands, and the Brits' once they started going down the same road. Turtle Fan 19:34, April 19, 2010 (UTC) :That certainly would have been a good political trick; I wonder if HT didn't use because the US, etc, refused safe harbor to Jews in OTL before and during the war. ::This was after the war, but you might be right. That is the sort of trick he'd pull. ::Funny, I was just the other day reading about those two New England WASPs, the Sharps, who were in Czechoslovakia when the Sudetenland got handed over. They set up an underground railroad to get the Jews to safety, and escaped through it themselves, seperately, when the Gestapo caught on. The wife got out one day before she was scheduled to be arrested, by pure coincidence. They went back to America but just long enough to organize support for a long-term rescue operation group, then returned to Europe. They had planned to headquarter in Paris, but it fell while they were en route, so they set up shop in Portugal and continued their heroism. Inspiring. ::The Israelis gave them the Righteous Among the Nations award, but not until they themselves were long dead; their grandchildren accepted on their behalf. Now that I think of it, it seems that most RAtN members are inducted posthumously. Almost as though Jerusalem were afraid living members would find some way to embarrass it or make demands upon it. Turtle Fan 00:33, April 20, 2010 (UTC) :There's also the issue that the Jews of Europe often identifed themselves by their country first, or placed their nationality on an even platform with their idenity as Jews. Atvar could have made the offer, without many Jews taking him up on it. Then you'd have the governments of Germany and Britain deciding whether or not to start expelling their Jews and looking like jerks. Atvar would certainly have gained some political capital by that offer, anyway. TR 20:02, April 19, 2010 (UTC) ::Surely nationalism can't survive in the face of the nation trying to kill the nationalist. Almost all of Poland's remaining Jews cleared out after the war ended, for instance. Now true the majority of them were going to Israel, so you might just argue that their nationalism had been transferred. But plenty went to the USA, which had finally opened up to them, and I've always thought that, if the choice of Israel had been taken off the table, most would have left anyway. ::Anti-Semitism of Nazi proportions was young enough (and vague enough in origin; never did figure out what HT was planning there) in Britain that it might have been shamed into giving it up by a spontaneous burst of patriotism among British Jews, in spite of everything. The Nazis themselves had no shame on this question. ::The counterblast from the anti-Lizard lobby would surely have been that Atvar just wanted to use the Jews. That might have tarnished his political capital a bit, seeing as it would be correct and especially since Cairo's diplomatic corps, much more direct than its human counterparts, would not even try to deny or obscure the fact. Of course, just because the Lizards would have been using the Jews does not mean that they wouldn't have seen a drastic improvement in their lives, one I'm sure they wouldn't mind being asked to do a little shilling to get. Turtle Fan 00:33, April 20, 2010 (UTC) A Possible Addition I thought of a possible addition but I'm not even sure how to go about titling it, let alone whether it's worth doing. In LA Frederick liberates a plantation and talks to a butler who had been given the option of fleeing with his forewarned master and chose to stay and take his chances with the insurgents. At least that was how he explained his actions to Frederick, but even assuming he was a sycophant and opportunist, he had still not felt loyalty to the master, who assumed he was a faithful servant. In "Trantor Falls" the Emperor and the First Speaker play out the same dynamic, and this time we can know for damn sure that he had no love for the Emperor and was bemused that the Emperor assumed he did. Not sure how to describe the connection, whether it's signifiant enough to be worth mentioning, or whether a third story adds an example to the first two. If there is a third example the case for worthwhileness of mention increases a bit. Turtle Fan 02:17, May 7, 2010 (UTC) :It's a universal truth that slave owners liked to pretend that their slaves were really happy. And throughout time, rulers just assumed their subjects all loved them. It doesn't strike me as that specific to Turtledove. TR 22:16, May 7, 2010 (UTC) ::True. The characters' descriptions of thei motivations were quite similar, but they were also very, very different characters in very, very different situations in very, very different stories. I guess I just thought it would be cool to have "Trantor Falls" on here. Turtle Fan 23:47, May 7, 2010 (UTC) Famous Landmarks Destoryed Just creating the section on the Tower caused me thinking. Should be add a section about famous landmarks being destroyed, because they sure seem to bite the dust quite a lot in HT's stories. Mr Nelg :We have the Eiffel Tower and St. Paul's. We could do an uber entry for all landmarks, I suppose. TR 03:42, May 13, 2010 (UTC) ::The Washington Monument and the White House have been knocked down a few times too, i think. The point I'm trying to make here, is HT loves to knock down famous landmarks. Not exactly multiple times, but any he can get away with. Mr Nelg :::I can only think of one time each for the Monument and the White House. There's a statue of Peter the Great in Petrograd that bit it in IatD, though if you drop a nuke on a city, then yeah, of course things are going to be destroyed. Turtle Fan 04:11, May 13, 2010 (UTC) ::::I think the entries about nuked cities work as a model. Note that HT likes blowing up monuments, name those that have been targeted, then discuss those that have been blown up more than once. TR 04:18, May 13, 2010 (UTC) :::::And we could keep the St Paul's picture with its caption. Turtle Fan 04:41, May 13, 2010 (UTC) ::::::Ooh, I just remembered: The redheads tear down some tower in Priekule that had stood for a thousand years and had been famous the world over. Since Valmiera was more or less France, it must have been an Eiffel analog, not that Eiffel was destroyed. They also blow up a triumphal arch in Jelgava that was at least locally famous. ::::::Of course, with such an undernourished Darkness category, I wonder whether we should even bother. Turtle Fan 06:53, May 13, 2010 (UTC) Order! Order! I was thinking of the other two main Trivia articles, which are both organized alphabetically. That's not really an option given the nature of this list, but I would like to see some sort of organization. Aside from "These sections are organized in whatever order we happened to think of them," that is. Turtle Fan 03:21, May 27, 2010 (UTC) :The newer series are more or less in chronological order. The older stuff--I've often thought about tampering with 191 and WW, but just haven't found the gumption. TR 05:09, May 27, 2010 (UTC) ::The problem is, since they don't have real titles, we can't alphabetize them; and since they all invoke similar events from different stories--which may have been written decades apart--we can't do them chrononogically or by series. So nothing really lends itself as an organizational scheme. We could try to brainstorm one. Turtle Fan 05:38, May 27, 2010 (UTC) :The problem occurred to me some time ago but I didn't (and still don't) have any idea on how to organize this, so I kept silent. ML4E 19:03, May 27, 2010 (UTC) ::How about moving the ones with the most stories represented to the top? That could be a start. Turtle Fan 19:54, May 27, 2010 (UTC) :::You know, I just realized, my initial response about "chronological order" was written under the mistaken belief that this was the Inconsistencies page. So I need to re-evaluate my thoughts on this topic. TR 19:56, May 27, 2010 (UTC) ::::I was wondering why you'd made the comment that you did. Turtle Fan 20:03, May 27, 2010 (UTC) Revisting I propose the standard "People, Places, Things, Events" would be a great way to start organization. TR 22:51, August 16, 2011 (UTC) :You mean, all the ones on people, then all the ones on places, etc? I guess it's worth a try. :I was just thinking we could try to organize the sections in descending order of importance. It would be extremely difficult to do that with finesse, and would be full of judgment calls; but at present we've got sections existing side-by-side where one is obviously much more salient and relevant than another right before or after it. Take, for instance, Items 17-20. Turtle Fan 02:29, August 17, 2011 (UTC) ::Not sure how one can measure "Himmler succeeds Hitler"'s relative importance in comparison to the lengthy A-bomb section. I'll play around with it tomorrow. TR 04:18, August 17, 2011 (UTC) For further discussion, see below. No Last Names I'm wondering how significant that really is. It's a pretty generic feature of a society, and a pretty common one too. Also, the list is incomplete: Videssos, Elabon, WBtP, the Race (which has no family structure). . . . Also, that should read "No Family Names" or "One-Word Names." Having family names come first is more common in the real world than the way we Anglophones do it, and in fiction it's still pretty common. I can't think of an HT story that does things that way, though. Turtle Fan 20:32, July 26, 2010 (UTC) :You're correct that it's a common feature in many societies. :However, in the examples I listed, the lack of family names is significant. Often they're examples of societies that would typically use surnames but do not. In Southern Victory, everyone has surnames except blacks; it is used as a tool of oppression. In the Darkness series, the lack of surnames is peculiar given that the world places such emphasis on class and nobility . In the Valley-Westside war, it is significant because it is a future society, and an indication of society's regression to primitive ideals. ::The lack of family names is not indicative of a regression to primitive ideals; if anything, the family unit is stronger in primitive societies, not weaker, so using a name would seem to be more important. However, no matter how you slice it it really is just a schemantic matter and doesn't say anything about a society's values at all. In Derlavai it doesn't have the significance you attach to it, either; they have their titles and their patronymics, they don't need family names to keep track of anything. In TL-191 you have a point, but it's a point unique to that series, and this is a page for ideas which hold true across multiple stories. For specific details, like Horatio Seymour winning the 1864 election, two stories is sufficient; for something as generic as this we'd expect to see a whole lot more. Turtle Fan 16:54, July 28, 2010 (UTC) :: :: Okay, you have a point. Bullies I know both Enos and Woo made footwear. I forget, was Enos making galoshes when she was bullied or was that at the cannery? TR 17:09, September 22, 2010 (UTC) :Galoshes, she "accidentally" got paint on the manager's shirt. Though the cannery manager tried to come on to her once or twice too. Barrel Nagurski 00:59, September 23, 2010 (UTC) Sex Harry is practically famous for out of place and unecessary sex scenes. Whiny and bitchy women as well don't know if he had lady troubles in the past or what. I recall the one that owned the cafe in DC that complained about men constantly killed her off casually with infection from a cut hand. The sex seemed so out of place at times to. Also the reference to "a man takes the weight on his elbows" was used at least twice once in the first World war book and in 21 counting up. 03:05, October 6, 2010 (UTC) :Using the same phrase in multiple works is not using the same idea. Character types come a bit closer but still not very close. What would we say? "In TL-191, Worldwar, Derlavai, RB, and DoI, Atlantis, ItPoME, MwIH, TWTPE, and Videssos, Turtledove has written annoying female characters"? That's vague, for one thing, and subjective, for another. And very un-PC for a third, though since I don't know of a single instance of a woman visiting this Wiki, I suspect that might matter less. :As for the gratuitous sex, we've wrestled long and long with ways to address that in the Wiki beyond what we already do now, which is simply flat-out say, in the article on Character A, " . . . At this point, he had sex with Character B." :As for his romantic history, I know he's on his second wife and that he divorced the first one. Beyond that I can't say, nor do I have the slightest interest in extrapolating. Turtle Fan 03:25, October 6, 2010 (UTC) Rename? I wouldn't mind renaming this article to "Turtledove's Tropes" or something. It's grown into something that focuses on neither timelines (AH) nor ideas exclusively. Turtle Fan 01:34, February 16, 2011 (UTC) Revision Discussion I was thinking, at some point in the past we discussed the possibility of either renaming this article "Turtledove's Literary Tropes" or something like that (in recognition of the fact that it's rather expanded beyond its original purposes) or else separating the ideas that are appropriate to such an article and giving them their own article. With regard to the latter option, I think its time may have come. It will surely make improving organization easier on some level, whether by ensuring that the remaining items are less diverse and more closely related or merely making the task less daunting. Turtle Fan 00:59, August 18, 2011 (UTC) :I concur. The "world turned upside down" and "blondes as the underclass" are examples that I stuck in "places" and "events" because they fit nowhere else. TR 03:19, August 18, 2011 (UTC) ::Then there are those on common traits seen among unrelated fictional characters. I guess those would be People, but they really don't belong in an article with this title at all. Neither, I think, does anything that needs to cite a fantasy story for an example, though Derlavai and especially Detina are close enough to real world events that each is arguably worth discussing alongside historical fiction set in our universe. ::And while we're in the process of heavily editing this article anyway, there are some, looking through the table of contents, that by right really ought to be deleted altogether: stuff that's minimally relevant and/or minimally interesting, like Stan the Man (though I do retain a particular affection for that example). Turtle Fan 04:39, August 18, 2011 (UTC) ::I agree. When we first created this article, we had many very specific things to focus on, and still do, but we've begun getting broader themes, tropes, and sometimes just amusing similarities. Some of these tropes aren't even unique to HT really (e.g., the tough but loveable sergeant is probably as old as the concept of infantry). We should definitely create the tropes page, and even dropping some of this stuff (I preemptively left out the "conversations with Stalin" section, since it was exclusively "this scene is like that scene" comparing WW and Darkness.) TR 16:56, August 18, 2011 (UTC) Germany Never Unified In both The Two Georges and In High Places, it is mentioned that Germany never unified. --GusF (talk) 23:08, February 10, 2014 (UTC) Nor in The Disunited States of America. Maybe call the sub-article "Disunited States of Germany"? ML4E (talk) 23:22, February 10, 2014 (UTC) :I vote "yes". TR (talk) 23:49, February 10, 2014 (UTC) ::So do I. GusF (talk) 11:12, February 13, 2014 (UTC) :::This is turning into a landslide. Turtle Fan (talk) 21:20, February 13, 2014 (UTC) Very good TR but what about In High Places? I haven't read it so you may have a reason. Otherwise, I would have edited the article. ML4E (talk) 00:32, February 14, 2014 (UTC) :Yes, In High Places should be there. There are multiple references to "the Germanies." GusF (talk) 00:50, February 14, 2014 (UTC) Germany goes to Mars Another Germany trope that I noticed popping up in multiple timelines. The manned missions in In the Presence of Mine Enemies and Worldwar are already mentioned but Curious Notions mentions that Germany sent a probe to Mars and determined that the planet was lifeless. They decided against sending a manned mission to the planet though so its inclusion for our purposes here might be sort of borderline. GusF (talk) 01:18, February 14, 2014 (UTC) ''The Two Georges'' and In the Presence of Mine Enemies I've just noticed two tropes which popped up in both novels. In OTL, British money was decimalised in 1971. In both novels, the British are still using pounds, shillings and pence in the late 20th Century / early 21st Century. Televisions are called "televisors" in the two novels as well. GusF (talk) 17:43, February 14, 2014 (UTC) :Maybe we can conflate that with the section on the wireless (aka radio)? TR (talk) 19:03, February 14, 2014 (UTC) ::That sounds like the best idea alright. GusF (talk) 19:25, February 14, 2014 (UTC) I don't recall from "Presence" but in T2G they use lots of Briticisms, e.g. "boot" for "trunk" in steamers, "lifts" instead of "elevators" and so on. Not surprising since HT wanted to emphasis there hadn't been an AWI so British expressions still apply in the NAU. I suppose something similar could happen with Britain if Germany won WW II and a subsequent WW III with the US. That makes the use of "wireless" in the Sothern Victory U.S. so strange. ML4E (talk) 19:57, February 14, 2014 (UTC) :I'm reading Presence at the moment and "boot" and "wireless" are used in the scenes based in London but "radio" is used in one of the Berlin scenes. GusF (talk) 00:52, February 16, 2014 (UTC) Russian Empire and Soviet Union last longer The Russian Empire continues to exist after 1917 in The Disunited States of America, Southern Victory, The Two Georges and "Uncle Alf". The Russian Revolution still happened in both Southern Victory and "Uncle Alf" but was a failure. In both Worldwar and The Gladiator, the Soviet Union survives into the 21st Century. Gunpowder Empire also mentions an alternate in which the Soviet Union and the US fought World War VI in the 2090s. "The Emperor's Return" has it still existing in 2003 but it was written (in 1990) before its collapse. GusF (talk) 00:52, February 16, 2014 (UTC)